Don Vicente Sottos' defiance of the Supreme Court, in defense of Press Freedom
Today is the 141st birth anniversary of the first Filipino who openly defied the Supreme Court. Don Vicente Yap Sotto was no ordinary respondent of a disbarment case, because it was the Supreme Court itself who instituted the complaint against him. Vicente took the Bar exam on March 22, 1907 but due to his self-exile in Hong Kong and the harassment suits against him, he was only formally admitted to the Philippine Bar on March 27, 1917.
What were the words of Don Vicente that earned him the anger of the Supreme Court? While sitting as a senator, he issued a statement published in the Manila Times and other daily newspapers:
"As author of the Press Freedom Law (Republic Act 53) interpreted by the Supreme Court in the case of Angel Parazo, reporter of a local daily, who now has to suffer 30 days imprisonment, for his refusal to divulge the source of a news published in his paper, I regret to say that our High Tribunal has not only erroneously interpreted said law, but that it is once more putting in evidence the incompetency of narrow mindedness of the majority of its members, in the wake of so many mindedness of the majority deliberately committed during these last years, I believe that the only remedy to put an end to so much evil, is to change the members of the Supreme Court. To this effect, I announce that one of the first measures, which as its objects the complete reorganization of the Supreme Court. As it is now constituted, a constant peril to liberty and democracy. It need be said loudly, very loudly, so that even the death may hear: the Supreme Court of today is a far cry from the impregnable bulwark of justice of those memorable times of Cayetano Arellano, Victorino Mapa, Manuel Araullo and other learned jurists who were the honor and glory of the Philippine Judiciary."
Don Vicente was threatened with contempt and disbarment by the members of the Supreme Court and this was his reply in the Manila Times dated December 8, 1948: The Supreme Court can send me to jail, but it cannot close my mouth." He made an addendum to his statement the following day: "It is not the imprisonment that is degrading, but the cause of the imprisonment." After he went home to Cebu, he said during the Rizal Day speech at the Abellana National School: "There was more freedom of speech when the American Justices sat in the Tribunal than now when it is composed of our countrymen." Don Vicente died on May 28, 1950 without making an apology to the Supreme Court, earning him the title: The Maverick Senator and The Father of Cebuano Journalism, Language and Literature.
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